Hands On: LogMeIn Free and Rescue

I provide tech support for my dad. He has a tendency to download any program and click any permission. He's the kind of person who often has three or four toolbars on his browser, and he never knows how they got there.

Oh, did I mention he lives about 1,300 miles from me?





Until recently, we'd get on the phone, and I'd talk him through undoing whatever he had done. This method doesn't work well. Sometimes I'd miss something, or he'd forget to tell me everything he did--frustrating.

But when we tried LogMeIn Free, the stress level immediately sank. He installed software on his troubled computer, which I was then able to control through my browser (Firefox works fine).

The software is easy to install--though it's not simple. There are a lot of questions to be answered during configuration, and passwords to be shared and remembered. But once the two PCs are linked, the operation is a dream.

The best way i can describe this is that controlling my dad's computer through LogMeIn felt just like I was there. Sometimes screen refreshes were slow, but I blame his condo complex's shared and sluggish WiFi more than anything. Because of how they are processed, "overlay" videos cannot be seen, but that hasn't posed a problem for us.

Yesterday, he had a problem on a new computer. Instead of stressing out with the free product, we decided to try LogMeIn Rescue. You're offered a two-week free trial, after which a yearly subscription is $1,188.00. That number would choke me, but if I were someone who serviced many computers on a regular basis, $1,188 per year would be a small price to pay.

The experience of actually using "Rescue" was about the same as that of using the free product. The difference was setting it up on my dad's PC. I clicked a few buttons, which sent him a coded link. That was 90 percent of the battle. He ran the linked software, clicked Yes to a few permissions and we were on our way. Diagnostic information about his PCs health, though not needed, was also there.

We worked for over an hour to no avail. We couldn't find a solution, because it wasn't his problem! It turned out to be the condo's own mail server.